Many actuators, including active material actuators, are generally protected from mechanical overload by the use of mechanical springs or electrical-control schemes to avoid damage to the actuators when the output load exceeds a recommended limit. Both of these measures, however, present various concerns in the overload protection art. For example, it is appreciated that most conventional protectors provide a non-tunable, one-size-fits-all protective force that may be too resistive for some systems while too weak for others, and likewise for the same system over various stages of use/age, or conditions. Commonly, linear mechanical springs further tend to be bulky because of the conflicting requirements of high force threshold for the overload function necessary to enable normal operation, and low stiffness to restrict the maximum stress experienced by the actuator when the overload protection system is activated. Meanwhile, more versatile electrical/control schemes that rely on timing and/or feedback have been developed, but present concerns of their own, such as increased system costs.